Are lad mags funny?

The issue of “lad mags” is an interesting one to me because it seems that many issues that are debated in terms of men’s magazines seem to also be discussed in terms of women’s magazines in addition to various other topics that are relevant only to men’s magazines. Gill talks about how it is difficult to create a men’s magazine that caters to a general population that most readers will be interested in. This challenge is also present in women’s magazines as we saw from the various magazines that we analyzed in class which each catered to a certain type of woman.

                With the growing focus on masculinity and issues of masculinity in the arts, the topic of men’s magazines seems to be one that could heat up fast. As we have discussed, there is a perception of a “crisis of masculinity” in today’s society and the question of how magazine staff and editors may deal with this possible crisis could be a challenging one to tackle. While  there are similar issues at hand with men’s versus women’s magazines, there is a large distinction between the two in that women’s magazines tend to be more oriented toward the attainment and maintenance of “femininity” while men’s magazines are taking a turn towards a more playful approach encouraging pleasure, consumption, and irony.

Lad mags have sparked some controversy about whether they are genuinely funny or simply offensive and problematic. UniLad was forced to pull a "surprise" rape segment and other lad mags have been called out for offensive segments; however, it is argued that these segments are not intended to be taken seriously and that a unique sense of humor/irony is needed to fully understand them. However, while humor may be present, it may be more harmful than funny.

My voice, your voice and Teen Voices matter!

Gill does a great job discussing the very controversial topics of how gender in magazines is defined. She introduces the topic of contradiction versus coherence where she pulls out the illogical messages mainstream magazines send to their targeted audiences. These assorted messages are in magazines targeting teenagers, children, heterosexual women and men. She studies the magazine discourse with emphasizing on the political economy perspective in understanding magazines. She highlights the ideologies of romance, consumption, celebrity and boy watching, that teenage girls have consumed in the different magazines. One of the main contradicting messages teenage girls had to receive was to correctly display themselves as attractive, with keeping up with the hottest trends and knowing how to attract a boy while also receiving the message that being themselves was essential. The question in play is then, how can a girl be themselves when society has already defined who she should be?

Another controversial topic is sex. There are structuring discourses where magazines like Cosmo emphasize on how women must please their man and how women should get out of their comfort zone.

There is a perception that there is a feminist or post feminist discussion on sex relating to women needing to take charge of their sexually and being comfortable with their partner. With the example Gill mentions, Macdonald (1995) discusses an article in 19 and advises how women should give a perfect blow job although women do not enjoy giving oral sex, they should still perform because men enjoy it. And later states that sexual acts should be mutually enjoyable and women should not feel under pressure. All of these “juggling acts” lead targeted audiences on a wild goose hunt in attempt of defining their sex lives, interest and who they are as individuals.

There are great magazine companies that do not bring such contradiction to this genre. One of my favorites is Teen Voices. 

“Teen Voices supports and educates teen girls to amplify their voices and create social change through media.” The magazine is based in Boston and I remember as a teenager reading Teen Voices with confidence. I felt empowered, inspired and excited to take on the world with my voice. Discussion of appearance, consumption and attracting boys were irrelevant. Teen Voices is great and should be in every teenager’s possession but reality is that it is not a mainstream magazine like Cosmo. How do feminist change this? Why is the media shaping our society? My voice, your voice and Teen Voices matter!

Ideological Critique: Today's Weddings

Gill's discussion of the ideological critique, which she defines as, "to refer to a large body of work focused on the connection between cultural representation--meanings--and power relations, affirming the importance of images, values, and discourses in constructing and reproducing the social order" (54), is important to understand in today's society. Gill is saying that by tracing the genesis of an ideology we can learn how our society is constructed and who it is that is in fact doing the constructing (those with power). In speaking to this notion of power, Marx and Engels promoted an ideology that resonates strongly today amongst scholars. Theirs is the idea that "the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas." So in turn, those with the material power also wield the intellectual power in capitalist systems. This can be put to the test when we consider today's media and the what message those with power are trying to convey.

In the Projansky and Vande Berg piece on Sabrina the Teenage Witch, they argue that while Sabrina does represent "girl power" to an extent, the show does more to "maintain rather than undermine gender, race, and class hierarchies" (36). In focusing on adolescent girls, Projansky and Vande Berg note the appeal of their demographic audience as consumers. Thus, Marx and Engels can be heard again in that those who are looking to make profit will do so on behalf of the adolescent girl, in turn fostering their sense of ideals and the world around them. In a more contemporary vein I look to shows that today's girls are drawn to, in particularly those about weddings. Everywhere you look on the television you see shows such as Bridezillas and Platinum Weddings promoting the idea of lavish weddings being the norm. This sense that weddings need to be these grand events that come close to $100,000 in expenses is absurd. I witnessed the effects of the new age wedding this summer when my cousin was married. Her family is by no means rich yet she had this idea of what a wedding should be set in her head and while it was very nice, it was ridiculous. I'm sure everywhere she looked on the television she was being reminded by those on top, those who know their consumer base, that this is what a wedding should look like. According to The Wedding Report, a market research publication, the average American wedding is $29,000. That is truly unbelievable. My parents talk about their friends weddings in which the rehearsal dinner was at a firehouse and the menu consisted of hot dogs or hamburgers. Now, because those on top in the media wield the power of producing marketable material on television, they are making that material a reality across the country and establishing intellectual ideals that are misguided.

The "normal" wedding procedure according to Bridezillas

We'll Get the Data, You Do the Explaining

Gill and van Zoonen both to a really good job at explaining how content analysis is used as an objective tool for looking at media. Gill specifically, says that content analysis is often used as a way to make an argument about various media representations more persuasive, in some cases give reason to start having a conversation about media representation. I liked this approach a lot because I think content analysis is very helpfully in being able to see all the ways media represents gender, or race, or class in an easy to digest format. Take for example the data on page 71 in van Zoonen. Even without background as to what this data was looking to find, its very obvious that the two columns labeled women and men are displaying very different representations. Firstly, the men’s column is much longer than the women’s column, offering more choices in profession with more even numbers of how many media men do those tasks. The women on the other hand have far less professions and have a very clear front-runner with more than half the percentage in one occupation. Even with very little context by reading this information you can immediately start a conversation about why this data is the way it is. You might also be able to say, with almost certainty, that there is something problematic about what this data reflects. This content analysis doesn’t explore why the data is the way that it is, or how media executed these various representations; it just presents the data in an objective manner and requires someone else to figure out the significance of it.

The follies of content analysis

This weeks readings were about the basics of content analysis, and I think the readings did a good job of talking about the promises and pitfalls of this research method. However, I would like to expand on the problem of a lack of deeper meaning/the use of stereotypes.

            As Gill and Van Zoonen point out, content analysis depends on the researchers ability to classify media images according to stereotypes. I think this is problematic for three reasons. First, by using cultural stereotypes, such as the dumb blonde, to categorize media representations,the research does little to upset the stereotype. Additionally, because much of this analysis uses the theory that the media is--or should be--a reflection of society, the use of these stereotypes in research seems, at least to me, to be perpetuating the stereotypes.

            My second major issue with content analysis is that in using stereotypes, content analysis ignores the multiple meanings each media image could have in different contexts and focuses just on the simple, dominant meaning. This is similar to the example used in class of how a cartoon by The Onion is considerably less offensive when one knows it was created by a satirical newspaper. Using content analysis, one could conclude that some ironic media representations are “bad” when, in fact, due to their irony, they have may have been “good.”

            Finally, while I understand the desire to obtain hard, quantitative data, I believe that content analysis is not generally useful (in the sense that it gives us a deeper understanding of the text being analyzed) due to its tendency to see images as having only one meaning. If post-modernism has taught us anything, I think it is that meaning is not singular and fixed but multiple and fluid, and the fact that content analysis ignores this makes me doubt its validity and utility as a research method.

Love Your Body

On October 19, 2011 the NOW foundation celebrated its 14^th annual Love Your Body Day. On this day, “women of all sizes, colors, ages and abilities come together to celebrate self-acceptance and to promote positive body image” (NOW.org). A major aim of the campaign is to challenge the unrealistic standards and stereotypes that are present in the media. Gill argues that it is “possession of a sexy body that is presented as women’s key (if not sole) source of identity” (Gill, 255). Particularly problematic is the notion that if this “sexy body” cannot be achieved it is considered a failure.  Additionally, the female body is “constructed as a window to the individual’s interior life…indicative of her emotional breakdown” (256). The Love Your Body Day emphasizes a valuing of women for their character not their outwardly appearance.

Dove has done much in the media to help promote positive body image. In an ad in which Dove asked women what they loved about themselves the women initially responded with a resounding “uhhh…?” The ad concludes with the statement “If we can see the beauty in others, shouldn’t we be able to see it in ourselves?” The media presents an unrealistic image of women that sets a standard of beauty that many women believe they do not live up to. Organization such as NOW and Dove that help dispel stereotypes of what is beautiful and promote positive body image should be more abundant in the media.

The Trouble with the Media

            Advertisements in the media play such an influential role on the ideas of feminism in today’s society.  However, no matter how these advertisements portray feminism, it all depends on the way the public interprets the situation. 

            The reading from Gill focused on cultural politics and feminist media activism.  This feminist media activism took many different forms including sticker campaigns, guerrilla interventions, positive images, calls for more women working in the media, etcetera.  The sticker campaign dealt with posting stickers to advertisements that were degrading to women and shown in public venues.  Similar to this were the guerilla interventions, which was people writing graffiti on demeaning billboards.  Both of these were ways in which feminists used advertisements to promote for a greater diversity of women in the media and as an attempt to get people to accept themselves and others, especially women. 

            Love Your Body Day is a day in which women of all shapes, sizes, colors, ages, and abilities celebrate self.  When I read about the “Love Your Body Day” from the NOW website it reminded me of the positive images section in Gill.  In Gill’s reading, campaigning with positive images was the idea that since “ . . .women were trivialized, condemned and symbolically annihilated in the media” (Gill, 34), we need to show more positive images of women in order to show a greater diversity and add a strong, optimistic touch to the campaign.  These positive images would make women feel more confident in who they actually are contrary to what the media says, which is exactly what Love Your Body Day is about.  However, the campaign ran into problems because there was trouble in what exactly a positive image of a women was.  Many women see models as positive and attractive, however many feminists see attractiveness in images of women with wrinkles and no makeup. 

            When I read the “Love Your Body Day” article, I agreed with the women of NOW.  I thought to myself that the way people feel about themself should not be affected by these either positive images or negative images that the media shows in magazines and in advertisements.  The media is affecting so many women into thinking that they are not “normal” and that they have so many problems, which is in turn causing a lot of women to be unhealthy.  People have to love themself before anyone else will accept them for who they are, therefore they cannot pay attention to the false messages the media is sending about beauty.  If women do this and disregard the media, they will become more confident in their own eyes and with their own body. 

The picture I added is very true and reminded me of the NOW article, as it is from the Love Your Body campaign, and Gill’s reading.  Because of what the media says, women are so concerned about what they look like to others that they are forgetting the most important thing in life which is to be happy with oneself.

Black Feminism- Getting "The Help"

Gill introduces the idea that feminism transforms and discusses the reshape of the feminist women according to Black female. The false universalism left Black women feeling as though the definition of being a white woman was completely different from being a black woman. The black and third world women felt as though the texts of the second wave addressed college educated, upper middle class, and married white women. What this reshaping did was open up a new tactic of viewing the framework of feminism. This opened up ideas for women of different race, ethnicity, class, disability, age and several other areas that were easily looked over. An enticing topic that she bought up was the fact that most white feminist failed to discuss their own privilege. "In exploitation of black women, in circumstances that vary from domestic work to sweated labor," (28). The first thing that ran through my head was “The Help” and how the movie did a great job in challenging the sexism media displays by having an all-female cast.

The film focuses on the women in a different context besides the usual dependence of women on men and greater issues of sexism. What a lot of black feminist have discussed is the lack of representation.  We seen the privilege white women have over black women due to the only reason why black women can voice their opinions is through the help of a white women. A Black feminist political scientist Melissa Harris-Perry “‘The Help’ reduces systematic, violent racism, sexism & labor exploitation to a cat fight that can be won with cunning spunk.” This is a different view of “The Help” and really controversial. You have to see this MSNBC clip of Harris Perry really getting specific to why she was very angry in viewing the film.  She calls this film a way to make white women feel better. This conversation includes the discussion of feminism but also black feminist wanting this different framework and definition of feminism differentiated from white women. We see this inclusive feminist movement offending the women who honestly have different experiences.

Nothing But An Escape

Romance novels have never been my idea of "good literature." Even though I have very limited experiences with romantic novels, I have always thought them to be a little too superficial and unrealistic. To me, romance novels seemed to simply be an extension of society's flawed notion of romance and the relationships between men and women. I just didn't see the point of reading romance novels. Janice Radway's piece definitely gave me a slightly different perspective on the issue of romance novels and media consumption in general.

Before reading this piece, I had never even considered the idea of using romance novels as a form of escape from the realities of life. It had never occurred to me that the seemingly cliché characters and predictable story lines could actually serve as a way in which to immerse one’s self in an idealized fantasy world. Radway’s study of Dot’s clientele was very interesting to me because it gave the female readers of romance novels a chance to express themselves and to explain their love (or obsession?) with these novels. Although I do not plan to go out and start reading as many romance novels as I can get my hands on, I did begin to identify with the women on their use of this media as an escape from real life. For instance, I am an avid viewer of MTV’s Jersey Shore. As a fairly educated young woman, I am fully aware that the show’s portrayal of women isn’t the most favorable. However, I watch it because it provides a break from the stresses of college life. Once a week, I can watch other people party it up and momentarily forget about the giant assignment I have to finish.

The chapter in Gill concerning audience consumption was also very striking to me in the manner in which it analyzes different kinds of media consumption studies from different points of view. I was struck by the fact that things like differences in location could have such a profound effect in the consumption of media and the manner in which it is interpreted. As a very large consumer of media (especially electronic media), I was pleased to see that research was being conducted from the point of view of the audience; as opposed to the research done by academics without any consideration of the average audience.